Ballastexistenz (wordpress.com)

location

The website of Mel Bagg's.

Sie died April 11, 2020. I came across hir post via clicking around on Bluesky. Below is an excerpt from hir obituary from the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network:

Yesterday, the autistic community, the self-advocacy movement, and humanity at large lost a titan, a leader, a visionary, a public intellectual, and an artist whose work has influenced, inspired, and forged paths forward for thousands of autistic activists and advocates for decades. Amelia Evelyn Voicy Baggs, known to friends as Mel, died in Vermont, where sie had lived for many years after migrating from hir home among the California redwoods, crocheting tapestries and shawls, loving cats, and spending time with nature. Sie was a powerful advocate and writer who consistently named injustice and constantly demanded better, while also creating and curating some of the earliest and most essential writings on autistic culture, neurodiversity, and autistic experiences that many of us still turn to today.

Our movement exists in large part due to hir work, much of it catalogued on hir blogs Ballastexistenz and Cussin’ and Discussin’, and in the original autistics.org archive. AWN too was once privileged and honored to have published one of Mel’s essays in the anthology What Every Autistic Girl Wishes Her Parents Knew. We had always looked forward to Mel’s future work in the many venues where sie shared it.

URL: https://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com/